BATON ROUGE - The EBR school board has expanded its protocol to allow trained school personnel to use Narcan on campus. The school system told WBRZ that EBR has been providing Narcan on campuses for the past two years. In December 2022, EBR schools started keeping Narcan in the case of overdose emergencies. 

Stacey Dupre serves as the Chief Officer for Support and Special Projects in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System says that it is great that no school in the parish has had to use Narcan.

"Although I'm not an expert with drugs in the community, there has been an increase in opioid use in the community. We are very fortunate in the school system to not have used any of Narcan products." 

Anti-drug activist Tonja Myles was one of the first people to fight for Narcan to get into schools and says that she is happy that EBR has had Narcan as a precautionary rather than having to use them.

"The fact that this now, or has been, in schools since 2022 [is] amazing, because at the end of the day, I hope it never happens, but if it does, we need to have everything in place to save their lives," Myles said.

Myles said having Narcan on campus is just as important as having AEDs or Epi-Pens for emergencies.

"This is prevention, is making sure nothing like this ever happens on any campus, and so we have to always make sure we are ahead of anything," Myles said.